The terms used below, such as front and back, or front and rear, relate to the firing direction, with the front pointing in the firing direction, the back pointing away from the firing direction. Where proximal or distal are used to explain a feature, proximal will refer to herein as the back and the distal will refer to herein as the front.
Traditionally, silencers (also referred to as suppressors) have been built with an outer tube and internal baffling components. The outer tube is steel or aluminum tubing and has end caps, either welded or threaded in place. The internal components are typically a set of flat disks each having a hole through the center thereof with spacers therebetween to create a volume of space (referred to as a baffle chamber) between each set of disks. Improvements on the flat spacer configuration include various expansion cone shape baffles that are either machined or stamped. Some of these baffles include holes at various places to re-direct gases and increase turbulence of the gases internally as the bullet passes thought the baffles. Such a configuration aids in reducing the noise produced by the firearm.
The pieces of the outer tube attach in a gas-tight manner onto, for example, an outside thread on the muzzle of a rifle. The disks extend in a plane that is orthogonal to the firing axis of the barrel. The firing opening of the disks can taper outward towards the front.
More modern suppressors that make use of what are referred to as “M” and “K” baffles incorporate both the expansion cone concept with the spacer as a single unit. These units are individually machined on a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) lathe and stacked on top of one another and are subject to stack-up tolerances during assembly. Recent designs include a monolithic baffle that is either drilled or milled from a round piece of stock. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,079,311 and 6,302,009 to O'Quinn et al. describe a monolithic baffle drilled or milled from a round piece of stock.
Characteristics of designing a suppressor include the number and the shape of the chamber parts. Each silencer also must be adapted to the weapon and to the ammunition used in the weapon. Another aspect to consider in this context is the silencer's sound-reducing requirements. Each chamber part reduces the muzzle report by a given amount and, therefore, a larger number of chambers is desirable. However, because the silencer increases the total length of the firearm and adds weight to the muzzle (thus impairing the weapon's balance), overall, the silencer should be as short and light as possible. Although different weapons may have the same caliber and muzzle shapes, it is still necessary to manufacture and stock many silencers with different lengths, in order to meet all requirements. This heavy expenditure is a disadvantage.
All of these methods for building a suppressor are very labor and cost intensive, thus resulting in a high production cost for the suppressor. Also, production in this way requires a significant amount of time. Currently the demand for silencers is exceeded by the capacity of the manufacturers and has resulted in waiting times as long as eight (8) months. Thus, it would be desirable to reduce the machine time and component count to a minimum and to be able to build a silencer that is mass-produced with corresponding lower costs while still having comparable performance.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.